Abigail Calkin called me today after she partially heard a story on the BBC about
Facebook drones delivering Internet access from the stratosphere.
Pie in the sky? Maybe not, but it will be years before we know. And the drones are intended for "suburban" areas. For areas with lower population densities like ours, the answer is still "satellite," albeit medium earth orbit satellites which would be far superior to the geosynchronous orbit satellites we use for Internet access now. And whether they use lasers or, like
Google's balloons, radio, there's nothing like a wired connection as proposed in the
Gustavus broadband plan, especially where trees block much of the sky.
Interesting to think about, though! Thanks to Abigail for calling this to my attention.